IZEA Blogs :: Advertiser: Opportunity Delights!

Get Started!

Opportunity Delights!

Dec 10, 2007

The times, the are a-changing...and so is our system! We've been working far harder than Santa's elves to help make the Opportunity creation process more streamlined and efficient. If you haven't had a chance to look over the new features and capabilities, I'd be honored if you join me for a brief walk-through.

Remember that creating an Opportunity in the Marketplace is typically meant to release your Opp to multiple people. If you'd like to create an Opportunity for just one blogger, you can use PayPerPostDirect and hand pick your blogger from the PPPDirect[ory].

First, the Disclosure Badge. Since we do require disclosure from our Posties, you can create your own Disclosure Badge for the blogger to place directly in their post! This is not a new feature, but it's a great way for bloggers to fulfill the Disclosure requirement, while adding an extra link for you! I encourage you to use the Disclosure Badge, as it has been shown to have great effects for Advertiser campaigns!

Here is a previous blog post that Ted wrote, about the advantages of using the Disclosure Badge: http://advertiser.izea.com/blog/2007/10/disclosure-badg.html

Second, let's take a look at some of the segmentation features. Segmentation is the ability to filter your Opportunity to a specified group of individuals by certain factors such as rankings, location, categories, and blog domain. You can read a little more about the segmentation features offered here.

Currently, an Advertiser can target his Opp to the right bloggers by specifying a minimum average tack rating, excluding free-hosted domains, categories, and by location [geo-targeting]. The newest capability is the ability to not only get your Opp to the right place, but help reach your own goal of focusing on either SEO or traffic by way of choosing either segmentation through PageRank or RealRank.

I'll highlight a couple of the most misunderstood features:
Tack rating: Advertisers are able to rate a blogger based on the quality of the post submitted, in correlation with the given Opportunity description. In other words, if you choose a 4-5, which are the highest scores, you will be receiving posts from bloggers that fellow Advertisers have rated highly.

Geo-targeting: When you select a region or a specific country, you are limiting your Opp to bloggers currently living in that area. This is incredibly helpful if your particular business is well-known in that region because then you have bloggers who are able to provide better content since your service directly relates to them!

RealRank: RealRank is our dev team's newest brainchild. Basically, RealRank snaps a far better reflection of a website's actual traffic, and influence. It's formula is quite simple and is easily explained here. RealRank is far more accurate that Alexa, and entirely more reliable than PageRank, it's really all you need!

Remember, when creating an Opp, you can choose either RealRank, if your goal is geared toward traffic and page visitors; or PageRank, if you're seeking SEO.

Third, we recently added the choice of making your required links either followed, or nofollowed. Simply, when requiring a link, if you do not wish for search engines to qualify the link, choose the nofollow option. This causes search engines to ignore the link, so it will not count toward SEO. The links section also has a field for you to enter any links from your own metrics/analytics accounts on third-party sites.

I hope this brief look at how you can better target your Opp to just the right blogger has been helpful. Last, there are plenty of areas to get help with the system and/or your campaign. Here are a few links to help guide you.

Advertiser FAQs: http://payperpost.com/advertisers/faq.html
Best Practices: http://www.payperpostu.com/bestpractices.html
Advertiser Tutorials: http://www.payperpostu.com/advertiser.html

And, if you have any questions, please feel free to send us a note by clicking on the 'Contact' link at the bottom of any page from within your account. Thank you!

Posted by Veronique Conus at 01:57 PM in Advertisers , Campaign Ideas , Featured , IZEARanks , Opportunities | Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:

http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00e00991f57a883300e54f9e521c8833

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Opportunity Delights!:

Comments (RSS)

James @ Total Web Review said...

It is time to make all links no follow. I don't think I will take another opp that requires a normal link. Push no follow! We have killed our blogs for ppp, help us out by making all links no follow. There are other places where you can buy links more discretely.

Dec 10, 2007 7:10:25 PM

Mrs. Mecomber said...

I am with James. I think it's time to remove the no "no follow" requirement. It has become detrimental to our blogs, and to PPP in the long run.

Dec 11, 2007 12:15:44 AM

raymond said...

indeed.. to remove the no nofollow option would be great

cause it not, posties would need to built up blogs, allow them to be slashed by google, rebuilt another new blog, slash by google again.. bla bla bla

Dec 11, 2007 5:30:20 AM

Robert MacEwan said...

@James,

I tend to agree and especially since the RealRank has not panned out thus far for the bloggers that make up PPP, at least not beyond the pure novelty of the moving numbers. Now if we see in the first quarter that the RealRank overtakes PR, in the eyes of the advertisers, perhaps then our no 'no follow' will be easier to swallow.

Dec 11, 2007 4:25:00 PM

Jaz said...

The part about us killing our blogs for PPP is totally accurate. Thank you, James. Couldn't have said it better.

We have riddled our blogs with badges and do follow links galore. Maybe it would be better to hit the no follow button and quit using the badges. Frankly, I disagree with the idea that those badges help. Maybe they do somewhere but on my blog they only add to the problems I have. It's a red flag that says "Paid post".

And advertisers! Please disregard the PR. If more advertisers will stop using it as a gauge, then the big g will have no power over us and we can do the job you want us to do!!!

Dec 13, 2007 11:08:13 PM

Au said...

very well said...all of you guys. I've always needed to see and hear somebody sharing the same sentiments that I have right now when Google suddenly dropped most bloggers' PR. I dont think it's ever fair to downgrade a blog or any site for that matter just because PR has gone down to 1 or worse 0. It's not enough gauge. It would benefit everyone --PPP, the advertizers and the bloggers if we do no follow for links.

Dec 14, 2007 7:29:47 AM

sfod223 said...

Everyone here on this comment thread is absolutely correct. I can recall when my blog was doing a lot of business. Not only with PPP but even getting reviews for sites and services from other web site owners. Now since "G" wacked me from a PR3 to PR0, I get very little opps even from PPP.

Dec 15, 2007 2:05:05 PM

SusJ said...

I have to agree that the new system does not seem very stable at this point. Everyone who was with PPP took a serious beating for it and unless you own up to google and admit you did wrong, they will not give consideration to receive your page rank back. We were penalized for doing a job and fully disclosing to all which posts were in fact the entries were paid ppp postings. Its really a shame how it has effected bloggers more so than the ranking of all of ppp

Dec 16, 2007 10:40:42 AM

shari said...

While everyone else seems to be excited about this I still have no clue as to what a good RealRank number is... and I'm finding that even though I log on ten to twenty times a day there are no opportunities for me as a newbie at RR 2700.

While I didn't expect to get rich doing this, I don't want to be a slave to the refresh button only to find out that if you're not at CNN ranking there are no opportunities available to you or all three of them have already been taken.

Am I just a single, bitter young postie or do I share my frustration with anyone else out there?

Dec 16, 2007 8:15:24 PM

Keith Cash said...

Shari;

You are not alone. There are alot of bitter posties.

The G issue cut my income in half. I just one of millions. So there are a lot of us.

Dec 17, 2007 4:05:57 PM

laane said...

The g issue (I don't use a capital anymore) has hurt me and my family very bad too.
I thought that maybe the new system would be able to lift out the quality blogs, but in my eyes it doesn't.

I hope the advertisers will think about the issue more.
A highly frequented blog, with highly clicked links means more exposure, but it doesn't guarantee that this exposure reaches the targetgroup for the product in such a way that the sales rise.

Now I'm thrown back in the amount of opportunities, I see many pass that would fit my readers as a glove, and would even without clicking the link lead to more sales.

I think the g-issue can be qualified as online discrimination, because it targets PPP blogs.
Who dares to sue?

About links.

I'm OK with links as long as I'm not punished for them.

Dec 18, 2007 5:31:13 AM

Clare said...

I was really excited about PPP as it really pulled us out of a hole, living on a fixed income. I have 3 blogs and they are hardly doing anything now at all so I have to look elsewhere to make some money for things like food. PPP said they passed the 100,000 posties point just awhile back but if there was some way to track them, I bet it is way down now as we just aren't getting any posts. What's the solution? There doesn't seem to be many new posts at all and one $5 post in 4 days won't buy the bread and milk. Apparently, all the posts are going to those with high Real Ranks and the rest of us are left out in the cold. Does anyone out there feel this way too?

Dec 18, 2007 5:48:42 PM

Amanda said...

I completely agree with everyone. I think advertisers need to take a serious look at the PR and know that great blogs went from a PR4 to a PR0 (like myself)it was very unfair of G to do that just because of the ppp

Dec 20, 2007 3:19:22 AM

Susan said...

Hi, I am not sure this will ever be read, or if anyone at PayPerPost cares. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I am very disappointed in the way that PPP's segmentation, Google's new page ranking, and Alexa and Real Rank have completely done away with the page ranks for both of my blogs as it has for many others. Did PPP have knowledge that they were about to eliminate thousands of bloggers when they implemented their segmentation and real rank systems, or were they clueless? Forgive me, but when I started with PPP, my page ranks were 3 and 2, I earned about $300 per month and my earnings were growing. It was great! October, November, and December of 2006 were the beginning of the end for me, in a matter of days, my blog's ranking dropped to ZERO, and the opps dropped off like crazy. Then PPP got things partially straightened out and I had my rank back. I had added a blog, earned a rank for that one as 2, but still the opps were not working right in the system. Then Google did its thing followed by PPP's real rank. In one fail swoop, PPP & Google have managed to minimize both my blogs rankings to ZERO. Now I have 3 opps to choose from, how did these new systems benefit the majority of us? I once eagerly signed into my account at PPP. No longer. I now pop in on occasion for lack of opps afforded me. Sad.

Dec 26, 2007 11:29:15 PM

clare said...

I totally agree with Susan. I think a lot of us are wondering if PPP is fading out. And did everyone take 2 weeks vacation at PPP. This dashboard hasn't changed for days. Everyone I know is starving for posts. What I got out of one of the messages on the board awhile back was that you should make your blog look like it isn't it just for the money. Then why did we sign up with PPP? I thought that stood for "Pay" Per Post". Isn't everyone out there trying to make some needed cash or they wouldn't be in it? I know 6 or 7 of us that are not getting much for posts. They seem to have evaporated?

Dec 31, 2007 4:30:48 PM

Susan said...

Thanks Clare, you also made a good point. When I started working with PPP I was able to snag, on the average 27 posts earning on the average $300 per month. However with the roll out of segmentation and subsequent changes from Aleza and Google it soon dropped drastically.

Here's hoping 2008 is a better one for PPP and all their bloggers!

In the year 2007 I had a total of 51 posts. That means of the 132 posts completed for PPP, 81 of them were completed in my first three months with PPP in Oct - Dec of 2006. These are the facts. My entries into my blog are mixed with paid and non-paid posts as required, and not just for the purpose of making a dollar. But as a single parent, this was a terrific way for me to add to my household income and be able to spend time with my children in the evenings and be there for them after school and work.

Let's not pretend that segmentation didn't hurt a lot of bloggers. Nor let us pretend Google's new page ranking didn't hurt hurt a lot of bloggers. I need to know what I can do to get my rankings back up to the level needed to earn what I once did with PPP. Any ideas?

By the way, even though I've not been able to snag opps from PPP I have been able to snag paid post opps from other companies, and because they have less restrictions on their bloggers, I have been able to earn about 1/3 of what I was with PPP. Ever amount makes a difference! Like I said before, I miss the days when I enthusiastically looked forward to signing into PPP and snagging an exciting opp.

Jan 1, 2008 12:30:23 PM

Cynthia Nichols said...

I am still wondering when/if even the types of opportunities that were available to me, ever will be again. I was doing (I thought) quite well, considering that I was new to this at the end of September. I feel like I got double slapped- once with Google and their Page Rank upheaval and now with RealRank. At what point do creative and well written posts have weight with anyone? Or will it always be about those who have the lowest numbers on the RR scale? I, like millions of others, sacrificed my Page Rank, made the effort to write quality posts for advertisers and wound up getting repaid with as rapid a decline in opportunities as was the decline with PR. I guess I just don't see the fairness in this entire picture.

Jan 1, 2008 1:00:23 PM

purnima said...

This is a very insant story

-------------------------------

purnima

A team of successful entrepreneurs credited for www.SelectWealthSystem.com
A new home-based-business marketing system that provides the strategic high ground for internet marketing.
Pro Team Marketing uses an automated marketing system that is currently promoting a cutting-edge young company, entering the early growth stage, that targets the largest consumer base in the United States with their financial educational products.
http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com

Apr 3, 2008 10:39:16 AM

purnima said...

Thanks for the info.

purnima

-----------------

Today social accounting become most significant issue in accouting

http://www.accountingforsocial.blogspot.com/

Apr 28, 2008 5:16:50 AM

purnima said...

I have to agree that the new system does not seem very stable at this point.

purnima

--------------------